Rick Roderick on Nietzsche and the Eternal Recurrence [full length]
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- Опубликовано: 26 янв 2012
- This video is 5th in the 8-part series, Nietzsche and the Postmodern Condition (1991).
Lecture notes:
I. Nietzsche invested himself as a character who would stand out above the text -- an act of self creation.
II. There is a sociological dimension to the "death of God" parable.
A. The death of God is a metaphor that signals something that's perhaps still on it's way. (It has yet to be understood in full.)
B. Society has changed in such a way that it is difficult to be religious. (Weber called this the disenchantment of the world.)
III. Nietzsche is known as the teacher of the eternal recurrence.
A. He's reluctant to give didactic answers because he's too decadent (born between two worlds).
B. Eternal recurrence is a challenge to self creation.
C. Nietzsche asks a horrifying question: what if everything that occurred -- occurred again -- just as it happened before?
D. Are you leading the kind of life that you'd be willing to live over again and again?
E. The challenge is to live an interesting life.
F. Nietzsche has more in mind than just changing jobs.
G. He uses a myth because of his rejection of dogmatic philosophy. The burden is on the reader.
H. Modernists are perplexed, frightened, and fascinated by death.
I. The threat of an apocalypse is fascinating to people because it is a communal experience.
J. Nietzsche was acutely, and perhaps pathologically aware of his own self creation.
K. Freud's biographer said that Freud said that Nietzsche knew more about himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live.
L. Nietzsche loved fate. It's a threat and an opportunity.
For more information, see www.rickroderick.org
A philosophy podcast, The Partially Examined Life, held a detailed discussion of Nietzsche, which can be found here:
www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/...
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So glad this was not just the one lecture, and is available to watch over and over.
If only I had the privilege of taking a course in philosophy from this man. What a brilliant lecturer. We love you Rick. Rest in Peace.
This man was my Father. I can’t express how grateful I am for the level of thoughtfulness and passion he instilled in all of us who were touched by his words. May his beautiful soul move courageously and rebelliously onward forever and ever.
This is the only real adequate explanation I’ve heard for Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence.
Roderick makes a badass Twin Peaks reference in this lecture.
18:52
Did he straight up give an eight hour lecture that day?!
Thank you for posting!
This is one of the best interpretations of Nietzsche I've listened to.
I love his southern accent. How he says profound -- "profayound" has much more class than typical East/West coastal accents. Seculariiiiised
I am enjoying your lectures thanks for sharing.
My question is what do we lose when we lose the parable? It seems like that’s our condition today. There are no stories, only cold “facts” and to communicate without citing a research paper is becoming almost taboo. What happens to society when our collective stories become subordinate to the atomized field of analytical proofs?
That's the tyranny of scientism, not science proper. Big difference. At any rate, no amount of science or "facts" will save us from ourselves.
@@thadtuiol1717 yes that’s exactly what I’m talking about-I have no problem with science as such, only it’s “religiously” inclined deterministic zealots
@@nightoftheworld While I have tremendous regard for the effectiveness of the scientific method, because flush toilets, electricity and penicillin, etc., I have very, very little respect for scientists today. They are very far from the impartial devotees of the scientific method that they so love to portray themselves being. With a few notable exceptions, they are cowardly, contemptible herd animals, more interested in jousting for a better position among the herd hierarchy than advancing the state of human knowledge.
There have never been more scientists accomplishing less of scientific value than at any point in the scientific era than where we are today.
An unravelling at hyper modern speed.
An empower with no clothes creating official narratives to maintain the status quo power grift and illusion.
Covid.
i've got this clip set to repeat.
Lecture regarding the eternal recurrence of the same begins at 12:47
thanks for the info saved my time
Thank you
Yeah, I want to second not skipping to 12 minutes in. The extra context of the first 12 minutes matters to the lecture.
thanks
Amazing lecture. Definitely articulates the psychological/narrative dimension of the eternal reoccurrence well but I disagree with his claim that it lacks a cosmological/metaphysical/ontological dimension; it simply wouldn't work without it.
My favorite cosmological theory. I want it to be true, because I want to be able to want it to be true.
selvmordspilot then you are doing it right for Nietzsche
Sorry to burst your bubble but no proof bro, also how can you be reassembled atom for atom in a void where nothing is determined at the quantum level? Can you imagine how your atoms would be reassembled after being scattered to unknown places in every iteration? Also the universe will most likely expand forever so there is a major doubt concerning the validity of the theory if it doesn’t collapse in on itself again.
Fantastic lecturer.
LIKE A BOSS
Close, Kyle played Claudius in a 2000 version of Hamlet.
27:25
Why is Rick calling remaining in graduate school to study different things pathetic? Can somebody please explain?
So i have a question, when we die, we automatically begin our same life again?
After your death, you will wait in nothingness until the universe collapses in on itself and explodes again, and the stars and planets are formed and life flourishes, until the time of your birth comes again to live the same life. The good news is that you will not wait long after death, because you will not feel time when you do not exist
32:42 “If you write a character in a novel or a play and you don’t like the character you can edit it-but if you write a character for yourself in an ongoing way you can’t just simply edit it out because it is you, your subjectivity that‘s an issue.”
Yes more dangerous surely, but you can edit it through Becoming / sublating
It truly is horrifying. It is a crisis. Thus, it is, as the Chinese say, an opportunity--to say yes, walk forward, "never forgetting our past."
that was fucking exhilarating
Nee-cha
The Eternal Recurrence sounds more like Nietzsche's fear of hell and being stuck . Time and nature do not stand still and neither does our awareness --even though at times we seem stuck.
Ok, but a David Lynch version of Hamlet would be incredible.
A self aware Narcissist is still a Narcissist.
@@arlodante1163 What is the sound of a lonely nerd who makes horrible music. If no one hears his cries does he still exist.
Interesting
16:00 more interesting to me, is the Indian variant of eternal recurrence and even a more expanded mathematical view of eternal recurrence. Meaning, more interesting is just take off all stops on what infinite recurrence mathematically implies, in other words go whole hog on the infinite variations which recur eternally.
Add infinite set theory into eternal recurrence, and just go where infinity goes! Sean Carroll urges thinking way bigger and longer!
Haha that serial killer joke just going right over peoples heads, for shame.
Arlo Dante For one, Rick is giving this lecture in DC, so that’s part of the reference. The joke is that he is provocatively playing with the typical perception of what a serial killer is, by alluding to politicians, specifically those also in DC, aka, the federal government, and likely referring to George HW Bush specifically, along with those who had just carried out mass murder in the Gulf War, which took place around the time of these lectures (also, Bush headed the CIA for decades, was more responsible for Iran/Contra than Reagan, the coup and mass murder against the Sandinistas, going after Noriega in Panama, etc).
The comedy is in the lacking way that society defines serial killer, but also the contradiction of Manson being considered a serial killer, while Bush and other politicians are NOT typically considered serial killers, despite the fact that Manson and Bush both never personally murdered, but both gave orders to people to commit murder. It’s as ironic, and quite dark little bit of humor, as it is cleverly delivered; part of the irony being how obvious it is that, per the ascription of “serial killer” (rightly so) to Charles Manson, GHW Bush is without question also a serial killer, *but to say so would be potentially libelous.*
Anyway, that’s my best attempt to explain it, without over-explaining it, or so I hope. Perhaps there are other layers or contexts that are lost on me, and perhaps I’m reading meaning into parts of the joke that Rick never intended to necessarily be there, but I think it’s a pretty safe analysis of it, given that I’m just interpreting it based on the actual words he used, and the context of the time and place. Hope that helps! ✌️❤️♾
Just as a Day well spent brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
-Leonadro Da Vinci.
The most important question you can ask someone.
Look up eternal recurrence in Wikipedia, lots of links, to Indian, Greek and modern.
The number line, is a good way to get eternal recurrence. If given eternal time and space, then it mathematically follows, that everything occurs forever to everything.
Eternal recycling of everything into all possibilities, with everything eternally musical chairing into everything else, so that everything gets to become everything, forever, and everything already has been everything forever already.
0:33 *reality of the parable* “One of the nice things about parables is that in a certain sense if one is to read them at all, engage in reading them at all, parables _demand / require_ interpretation. They _quite literally_ can’t mean what they say quite literally. And if you notice in many traditions the attempt to communicate through a parable is the attempt to communicate a truth that as it were could not possibly be communicated in another sort of more linear form without as it were the aid of a story.”
Adrian Rodgers when asked whether the Bible is to be interpreted figuratively or literally said, _”Both!”_ He made the point that the story communicates on differential levels and that a readers task is to determine what the symbol is saying and _literally_ believe it.
This is why it gets me that Roderick is so harsh regarding Christianity.. it’s as if he misses the deep psychoanalytical dimension which Zizek highlights in his work.
Growing up amongst southern baptists can have the affect of making one harsh against Xianity.
@@nightoftheworld wont argue with anything there, but perhaps amending my statement to "growing up amongst bible thumping hypocrisy" can have the affect of making one harsh against Xianity. I do imagine that your effort at coming to a layered, more nuanced approach at interpreting the Bable via hegel and lacan is a far cry from what Nietzsche and Prof Roderick were critiquing.
Radical individualist perspective vs. social perspective....
I.e would you live in order to perpetuate the social order you're a part of if it meant doing it over and over again within socio-political orders you're simply thrown into and have no choice about. In other words, are you willing to to perpetuate a communist order in one life, a capitalist in another, a Jewish order in one life, a Muslim or Pagan in another, etc.
Viewed from N's perspective it's very easy to see the naivete and dull yet dangerous stupidity of people who are finatically beholden to the beliefs provided by the immediate time, place and events of their current life. For these types, what the immediate surroundings provide as far as beliefs and life pursuits could've been not only different but the opposite: a fascist in one life, a democrat in another. And in both they would be viewed by the respective majority as a "good member of society". In N's view you are forced back on yourself to consider that maybe you're a hero or a monster or nothing.
How does this differ from living your life without regrets?
exactly!
Just to try your challenge, I'd say a life without regret simply could mean a life without making many, or any, mistakes - without hurting yourself or others too much and relies on a certain passivity in life. A life to the *fullest* would include suffering through the pain of mistakes in order to learn, interpret, create and achieve something great. I'm sure that could've been what you already meant, but without a more certain context it can be interpreted in different ways, depending on the person's experience and view of the world.
the analogy to art/drama gave it a different flavor to me
No regrets, no character.
Giggity goo!
See Thornton Wielder's play, "OUR TOWN".
To me, God's omniscience and infinite eternal mind (I'm atheist) using God's infinite powers as a thought experiement, is far more interesting.
I would presume that if God existed, he's solved the concepts of infinity and eternity and infinite fairness and infinite balance for ALL of everything, forever!
We're just bobbing like corks on the huge ocean of eternity and infinity, and if God exists, think of what God might know, that's totally allowable in my opinion, about eternity.
Chuck Beatty To me God exists in the form of state power. The enthroned regime can help guide God’s power into a malevolent force or a sublime one.
@@nightoftheworld Yes, the George Carlin and Christopher Hitchens fear of God's totalitarianism to infinite powers, that imperfect incomplete assessment of this "God" who is infinitely wise and powerful, and this totalitarian "God" whom to any of our human imperfect moral adjective concepts and metaphors, I agree with the obvious immediate and irreconcilable downsides to this totalitarian omniscient "God" who lets such horrors as natural disasters and let the Hitlers and their brainwashed minions perpetrate horrors like the Holocaust, for sure, this is all ivory tower speculation of the reasoning why there is NO God, which I favor, I'm hard core ahteist, I presume the smart physicists and cosmologists, the really smart ones who I mention below, are correct.
My simple layman's conclusion of my imperfect grasp of everything about the big cosmos patterns for all time and space, my own thoughts are this:
a) If anything
b) then everything
c) forever
d) we are experiencing something
d) therefore, everything will occur(and already has occured), forever
And I define everything as the infiniite-th most allowable eternal recyling of everything that ever is, into all possible combinations later, and that is a huge data set of variations, and nearly perfect repetitions although perfect repetitions are impossible and like Parmenides argued, logic would lead one to logically conclude there is ONLY ONE total eternal universe (the Max Tegmark super biggie all encompassing infinite sets at the infinite powers), having most likely like Sean Carroll (his ideas of the forwards backwards, and all the other types of counter balancing universes, and arrows of time universes) the biggest most correct of our physicists' and cosmologists' theories, whatever it actually is, undiscovered, but speculated, I'll accept whichever the winning theory is.
(Anaximander, Max Tegmark and Sean Carroll I favor their views, and I favor looking at the whole, the all, like Parmenides argues).
A truly excellent site that gives all the latest physics cosmology theories, is this excellent must read web site:
ruclips.net/channel/UCvb2XBxo86ZhcQyI2CA31Fgvideos
I wish when I was a philosophy student before I dropped out, I had seen Disculogic's RUclips excellent videos.
Chuck Beatty
Pittsburgh 2020
Chuck Beatty thanks for the comment, I’ll check out that channel. You sound like you might like Zizek’s work (Slovenian philosopher/theorist). His lecture _Ontological Incompleteness_ is great:
ruclips.net/video/ddctYDCTlIA/видео.html
@@nightoftheworld thanks. Unsatisfactory in my opinion, due to the other choice, which is the pre-Christian Greek pre-Socratic philosophers bringing up the "apeiron" (infinite indefinite) preceding and out of which an infinite spatial and temporal (in succession) universes form out of the indefinite/infinite. That truly is our condition, I favor that view. Infinite worlds in succession and spatially out to infinity in all direcitons, and all eternally being formed from the equivalent of the "apeiron" which today by modern physics the apeiron might be considered to be the quantum foam fluctuations out of which our current universe is thought to have arrived. And then on top of this current universe, or backwards looking, just using the Greek Anaximander "apeiron" (indefinite infinite) as the eternal building blocks of whichever universe anything finds itself, that is so obviously what is the case, at least that is where my thoughts take me.
Me, Anaximander and Parmenides and then our modern cosmologists, Sean Carroll, Alan Guth, Linde, Tegmark and others, are among them all, but whichever physics/cosmological theory wins, I just plug in Anaximander's "apeiron" for whichever theory wins, and I'm fine on it, since that gets me to infinite space and time succession universes, forever, and all the all being a big ONE as Parmenides conceived it had always logically to be a big whole. If "God" is the big whole, and we're parts that recycle into other parts, forever, and somehow at some "times" in this infinite procession of universes and musical chairing of being this or that part, let's say at moments there is this awareness of being the whole, then that would be our "God" momentary stand-in moments in the massive long stretch of the eternal musical chairing of things into being, into and out of consciousness things, humans being these conglomerate cell packages with limited spans of consciousness or a unique type of consciousness, that is, if the cells and all the sub atomic particles of the universe if they are individually little blips of limited consciousness or "will"/intentionality, or whatever. It's all infinite musical chairing, and no boundaries, but infinite, no big God who starts it all and is pulling any strings or idle, "he's" just a fiction of human imagination. Everything does everyone, in turn, and it's all a big ONE like Parmenides even conceived it all could be.
ruclips.net/video/MtkXpYmaWXg/видео.html
Chuck Beatty I have no qualms with speculation on the infinite recycling of energies, but in the end my concern is parochial and lies in this life as an atheist ultimately. What do you find unsatisfactory exactly? The point of _ontological incompleteness_ is to state the limit of the knowledge of oneself. We are finite creatures confined in our uniquely conditioned worlds and thus have only a limited view of truth. My _wholeness_ is not so if it does not include the abyss of subjectivity.
_”And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”_ Matt 7:3. The point being Hegelian in the sense that we can never see ourselves objectively as we are, only ever through reflection-through a glass darkly.
We are _incomplete_ and as such we are participating in the universal. The ontological gap marks our inclusion into the absolute. So though there is a ONE (if I understand you) this ONE is beyond us as conscious individuals since truth is always stained by consciousness-ONE in the real, cold, natural sense is no problem, an endless exotic movement of energy perhaps, but in a symbolic human sense my oneness is fractured absolutely.
That was my point with incompleteness, but perhaps we’re talking past one another now. I’m not so sure what all you are driving at. Could you reframe it more succinctly?
Did he say "Donald Trump" at 17:22? So Trump is famous in USA for a very long time!
Donut Jackass Trumpski is a massive, fetid arsehole!
it's always trippy when he comes up in something from the past lol hes been around for so long
There's an old Simpson's episode set in the future and they joke about Donald Trump having been president. O_o
*infamous.
All the World's a Stage, and we are each in our time Players, and our little lives are rounded by a sleep.
- William Shakespeare.
at the 17:20 mark he mentions Donald Trump. If only he knew...
You have to be a little Grandiose to believe in yourself enough even to attempt to write philosophy like Nietzsche.
If the dead Envy the Living then, YES. If they do not then, NO!
9000 years lol more like 2 trillion
GROUNDHOG DAY!
Death nice !
I believe the reason Nietzsche lost his mind near the end of his life was his inability to accept the horrors inflicted on humanity by the avarice, cruelty and caprice of men. His "Amore Fate" was a fraud born out of fear (terror management theory. His need to not only accept reality but the human condition was more than he could bare. Nietzsche was an amazing man and a profound philosopher with incredible insight but he was unable to truly live his own philosophy. Stoics see the world as it is and bravely act to better themselves and the world around them. Knowing they may not succeed or ever reach their goal they act with determination and detachment to the results. We cannot control others or the results of our actions however the one thing in life we do have a measure of control over is ourselves. We can be brave in the face of tyranny and brutality. We can cultivate character and discipline. Blindly surrendering to fate is type of resignation which brings, decay, stagnation, hopelessness and death.
Surely Amor Fati is the stoic philosphy of the Overman?
Amor fati isn’t succumbing to fate..
@@elia8544 How do you see it?
@@michaeljensen4650 Seeing it as a greater opportunity for self creation and overcoming. Whether that is true or not I can not say for sure.
@@elia8544 I believe at times that is possible however there are some things in life for which there is no solution or answer. Challenges can become opportunities but difficulties cannot always be overcome. There is also this idea that all growth and creativity come from suffering. We tend to romanticize pain and suffering feeling it to be a necessary. That is not always true.
Does an unattractive, unintelligent, over weight colored woman from a poor family with an abusive mother and psychopathic father love her fate? Personal growth is only possible when we are given just enough difficulty in life to challenge us and spurn our growth. If we are born into the most dire of circumstances we may be so overwhelmed with tragedy, pain and difficulty that it could be impossible to conceive of an idea like the love of one's fate. It would be utterly absurd and elitist.
Once she overcomes her condition, she will. Thats what Nietzsche's philosophy is about.
@@profkg6613 You completely missed my point. Circumstances can be insurmountable putting people in impossible situations. Does a street child in Mumbai love his fate. Amor Fati as a philosophy only works if you have some glimmer of hope and a whole lot of luck. If will power and hard work were enough we would all be millionaires. It is elitist to think such philosophy is for everyone. Many Jews did not make it out of the labor and death camps of World War Two. If you survive then you tell yourself a story about how it made you stronger, it helps you to live with what happened. Dead men tell no such tales. Wisdom does not always require suffering but a willingness to see the truth no matter how uncomfortable it makes us.
@@profkg6613 Middle class ideals and the Protestant work ethic are not a panacea for all of life's difficulties.
Michael Jensen I understand your point, and I agree with you quite a bit, but I believe self-creation can still be possible under these conditions, even if much more difficult. I believe in a more social self creation, created through connections with other people and rebelling against the atomization inherent in capitalism. I think it’s a travesty that the idea of self creation has been commandeered by the right, along individualist lines, but I think there is a collective creation that can be possible outside of the attempts by capital to create an identity for you. This is a bit rambly, and I apologize, but solidarity and rest in power Michael Brooks
@@noahstuckey8981 Each individual must first become his or her own person free from the indoctrination of their particular culture before they can form a new society based on humanistic values. We must individuate, develop self awareness and self realization before we can hope to overcome the grip our cultures, societies, power structures and economic systems. What is natural, what is artificial. What is harmful and what is helpful. What is a healthy human behavior and what is a pathological human reasoning and action. How can we hope to resuscitate civilization if we do not understand ourselves, human nature and the world we live in.